And what I'm saying is that if the choice is between getting my video game fix through all sorts of DRM, CP and whatnot or NOT getting my video game fix because that is the only way the publishers are willing to provide my fix then *I* know that my fix is more important to ME than maintaining a bunch a principles and rights I don't use anyhow.
Well, that's not really the choices you have. As it was said several times now, the content industrie won't stop producing things just because of high piracy rates. Have a look at the video games market, it's rapidly growing, not shrinking or anything. Ok, the pc games market is slowly declining, I seriously doubt however that this has anything to do with piracy.
You really have to keep in mind how important such rights as data protection and privacy are. Sure, I admit it myself... very often we're inclined to say, "Hey, I've got nothing to hide, I don't need that stuff," but in the great scheme of things such rights matter. Just imagine your son (I don't know if you have children, but you know what I mean) downloads a few mp3s from the internet, or a stranger uses your wlan-network to download some copyright stuff. Suddenly you are dragged to court and the music industry asks you for 200.000 dollars cause you downloaded 25 mp3s... do you think that's ok? If you're lucky they'll settle with a few thousand dollars, but in anyway it will be a real costly affair for you. They can only do that because right now the state can sniff around in your isp's log files (well, in some countries anyway - thank god Germany recently put an end to that practice). Even if it was really you who downloaded the stuff, and not your kid or a stranger... do you think that's fair? I mean, honestly now - do you only have stuff at home you bought? Even long before the internet people swapped stuff. Who hasn't a pirated music cd at home, that he got from a friend or a family member. The problem is that 5 years ago that was perfectly legal and now it's suddenly a criminal act? Don't get me wrong, I think it's ok, if the industry tries to catch people who want to make money with warez or people who offer like 3k mp3s in emule, but somehow it doesn't make sense to me if they are suing people who downloaded 10 or 20 songs they probably would never have downloaded legally anyway. The sums of money they're asking for are hilarious, not just in the US, but everywhere.
Privacy is something that concerns us all. What we're seeing at the moment is just the tip of the iceberg. Coming up next Radio-Frequency-Identification technology - awsome for the industry, bad for the consumer. Good copy protection, but unfortunately for you and me, it makes us very transparent human beings.
Now, if I remove my black and white glasses, then I understand what you're saying and I agree ... but we both know that even though the world would be a better place if the pirates would stop pirating, if people would greet each other with a smile instead of indifference and be understanding of other people's opinions instead of dismissing them at first glance as being stupid, foolish or just plain old wrong, etc, etc, etc, ... it just isn't going to happen. If you can somehow manage to convince the publishers to be reasonable then I applaud you but should you fail to do so, then I would rather have a game full of annoying protection than no game at all.
It's not the content industrie we have to convince of anything, it's the politicians. The content-industry is chronically stupid as it has vividly proven the last 15 years. Right now our system is utterly unfair. There are those that pay absolutely nothing for music, movies and software and then there are those that pay too much because they go to a store and buy the stuff. You'll always get your video game fix, I'll promise you that... but I also promise you, that there will always be people who'll get it as well - and for a much better price because they simply pirate what they need. And while you're struggling to get that new game installed, because your dvd-rom won't play that dvd with the newest drm, they'll happily enjoy their cracked game.